Abhijit V. Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics. Their previous book together is Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, winner of the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
"Good Economics for Hard Times makes important policy connections
and suggestions... Banerjee and Duflo explore traditional remedies
(tariffs sure aren't the answer, they find, and job retraining and
other trade adjustment tools are too narrow and take too long) and
suggest some novel ideas... In crafting their carefully reasoned
arguments, they marshal evidence assembled over decades from all
sorts of areas-the fight against malaria, past efforts at tax
reform, previous waves of migration-and propose commonsense
solutions."--Foreign Policy
"Good Economics for Hard Times lives up to its authors'
reputations, giving a masterly tour of the current evidence on
critical policy questions facing less-than-perfect markets in both
developed and developing countries, from migration to trade to
postindustrial blight."--William Easterly, The Wall Street
Journal
"'Good Economics for Hard Times' lives up to its authors'
reputations, giving a masterly tour of the current evidence on
critical policy questions facing less-than-perfect markets in both
developed and developing countries, from migration to trade to
postindustrial blight."--Wall Street Journal
"A canard-slaying, unconventional take on economics...This might
look like yet another conventional state-of-the-world economics
book, but it is anything but. It is an invigorating ride through
21st-century economics and a treasure trove of facts and
findings."--The Times (UK)
"A magnificent achievement, and the perfect book for our time.
Banerjee and Duflo brilliantly illuminate the largest issues of the
day, including immigration, trade, climate change, and inequality.
If you read one policy book this year -- heck, this decade - read
this one."--Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor,
Harvard University, and author, How Change Happens
"An excellent antidote to the most dangerous forms of economics
bashing...Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, write beautifully and
are in full command of their subject. Perhaps the greatest
contribution of Good Economics... is precisely this: it
demonstrates both the brilliant insights that mainstream economics
can make available to us and its limits, which a progressive
internationalism has a duty to transcend."
--Yanis Varoufakis, The Guardian
"Banerjee and Duflo have shown brilliantly how the best recent
research in economics can be used to tackle the most pressing
social issues: unequal economic growth, climate change, lack of
trust in public action. Their book is an essential wake-up call for
intelligent and immediate action!"--Emmanuel Saez, professor of
economics at UC Berkeley
"Banerjee and Duflo move beyond the simplistic forecasts that
abound in the Twittersphere and in the process reframe the role of
economics. Their dogged optimism about the potential of economics
research to deliver makes for an informative and uplifting
read."--Pinelopi Goldberg, Elihu Professor of Economics, Yale
University, and chief economist of the World Bank Group
"Carefully argued and backed with research...Good Economics is an
effective response to Banerjee and Duflo's more thoughtful critics,
some of whom argued that devotion to randomised trials had led to a
narrowing of economics, in which complex questions that could not
be scientifically tested should simply be set aside. The authors
make a convincing case that empirical economics contains answers to
many vexing problems, from populism to identity politics,
especially when economists are willing to range outside their
discipline's confines."--Financial Times
"Excellent...Few have grappled as energetically with the complexity
of real life as Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, or got their
boots as dirty in the process...A treasure trove of
insight...[Readers] will be captivated by the authors' curiosity,
ferocious intellects and attractive modesty."--The Economist
"In Good Economics for Hard Times, Banerjee and Duflo, two of the
world's great economists, parse through what economists have to say
about today's most difficult challenges-immigration, job losses
from automation and trade, inequality, tribalism and prejudice, and
climate change. The writing is witty and irreverent, always
informative but never dull. Banerjee and Duflo are the teachers you
always wished for but never had, and this book is an essential
guide for the great policy debates of our times."--Raghuram Rajan,
Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance
at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
"In these tumultuous times when many bad policies and ideas are
bandied around in the name of economics, common sense-and good
economics-is even more sorely needed than usual. This wide-ranging
and engaging book by two leading economists puts the record
straight and shows that we have much to learn from sensible
economic ideas, and not just about immigration, trade, automation,
and growth, but also about the environment and political discourse.
A must-read."--Daron Acemoglu, Elizabeth and James Killian
Professor of Economics, MIT, and coauthor of Why Nations Fail
"Lucid and frequently surprising... Banerjee and Duflo's arguments
are original and open-minded and their evidence is clearly
presented. Policy makers and lay readers looking for fresh insights
into contemporary economic matters will savor this illuminating
book."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Not all economists wear ties and think like bankers. In their
wonderfully refreshing book, Banerjee and Duflo delve into
impressive areas of new research questioning conventional views
about issues ranging fromtrade to top income taxation and mobility,
and offer their own powerful vision of how we can grapple with
them. A must-read."--Thomas Piketty, professor, Paris School of
Economics, andauthor of Capital in the Twenty-first Century
"One of the things that makes economics interesting and difficult
is the need to balance the neat generalities of theory against the
enormous variety of deviations from standard assumptions: lags,
rigidities, simple inattention, society's irrepressible tendency to
alter what are sometimes thought of as bedrock characteristics of
economic behavior. Banerjee and Duflo are masters of this terrain.
They have digested hundreds of lab experiments, field experiments,
statistical studies, and common observation to find regularities
and irregularities that shape important patterns of economic
behavior and need to be taken into account when we think about
central issues of policy analysis. They do this with simple logic
and plain English. Their book is as stimulating as it
gets."--Robert Solow, Nobel Prize winner and emeritus professor of
economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"The studies they cite probe hot topics such as climate change,
immigration and the viability of continued economic growth.
Banerjee and Duflo synthesize the literature on what is agreed and
what is controversial in an accessible, often entertaining
way."--Nature
"Their goal is to ground both sides of our national debate in hard
evidence, and the process of coming up with ways to do that is
pretty interesting in itself... Eager to distance themselves from
the previous generation of economists who argued from first
principles, Banerjee and Duflo say nothing that smells like special
pleading. It would be hard to take umbrage with such studied
humility. The authors admit, 'We clearly don't have all the
solutions, and suspect no one else does either.' Even so, the
prospect of a path towards consensus solutions through iterated
experiments is enough to make for a compelling read."--National
Review
A Wall Street Journal BestsellerA USA Today Bestseller
Winner of the getAbstract International Book Award--getAbstract
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